In addition to enjoying the wines and varietal selection so much at Bonny Doon Vineyard, Myles has begun following the winemaker there, Randall Graham on Twitter. Thus far this has meant that Myles wants to try everything he recommends. Last weekend he bought a bottle of Chartreuse (a curious tasting liquor) and on Thursday he came home from work with a bottle of Freisa.

Freisa is a native Italian grape, grown in the Piedmont region (ours was from Asti). It's a particularly tannic grape with high acidity. Myles said that what attracted him to this wine was hearing that it's often made by harvesting 80% of the grapes and allowing that to ferment while the remaining 20% dries on the vine. Then, once the remaining grapes are dried out, they’re added to the rest and finish fermenting.

Once I heard that Hugh Johnson (famous British winewriter) called wines made from Freisa “immensely appetizing” and Robert Parker, Jr. (famous American wine writer, who is often criticized for liking “fruit bombs”) calls them “totally repugnant”, I was definitely curious to try it. And considering Myles paid $7.99 for the bottle, I was really hoping it would be great.

The wine was very acidic and bitter, but was a good food wine. Not too shabby!

The Score: ★★★

Given the below average performance of some of the Friulian wines I’ve tried over the last few weeks, I was beginning to wonder if I was going to regret spending $50 on this wine. Its not like Picolit was on my master list, I just simply gave in to the uniqueness of this wine described by K&L as ‘very special’ and the fact there were only a handful in stock.

What really was the deciding factor was reading about this unusual grape variety. The Wine Bible describes it as the wine that “probably shouldn't even exist”. Because of a genetic mutation many of the flowers simply fall off instead of becoming grapes, this is caused by a super low pollination rate. Thus a very small, or piccolo, amount of grapes are produced. Those that do exist are then dried on mats to concentrate the sugars and turned into this rare, and pricey, dessert wine.

Like so many Italian wine grapes, Picolit is a regional one, this wine is made in the Friuli region. Period. It's a very golden honey color in the glass. It very nearly looked like a wine bottle full of honey.

On the nose it smelled of honey (as was rumored), and sweet. I also thought it smelled a bit like peach pie with fresh whip cream, which while incredibly specific, was specifically what came to mind. There was a hint of nuttiness, I thought hazelnut, likely only because I associate sweet, yet nutty things with hazelnut because of products like hazelnut coffee flavoring and Nutella.

Enough anticipation already-- how did it taste?! It was fantastic! It was lighter than I expected (perhaps because it could seem like one was about to drink a glass of honey). It was sweeter than honey, which when eaten straight up has a bit of tang to it, more like a light caramel. There were also peaches and some floral overtones. Just as the K&L description promised, however, it wasn’t too sweet, but very balanced. So good! Way to come out ahead in the end, Friuli.

The Score: ★ ★ ★ ★½

I have some buyers remorse on this wine. While Franconia (the Friuli name for the grape) is somewhat common, this grape is supposed to be one of the best red varieties in Austria, where its called Blaufränkisch. I should revisit it when I visit Austria at some point in the future. Its also grown in Germany (Lemberger), Bulgaria (Gamé), Hungary (Kékfrankos) and the Czech Republic (Frankovka). Its a grape with an identity crisis.

Naturally, I was super nervous to open this wine. The other Blason wine was the one that went down the drain, and this one cost $2 less! So, we chose to open it on Labor Day when it was about 90 degrees out, while we were barbecuing steak. Low expectations and still some of the Friulano left in the fridge as a consolation prize.

It had that awful bright yellow synthetic cork again and was quite a bit too warm (it didn’t get one of the coveted spots in my wine fridge and had been sitting on the sideboard since purchase). It was dark purple in color. So far so good. I simply drank it during dinner, as we were at a friend’s, and didn’t “taste” it and take notes until we got home. It was deemed drinkable at dinner, “not that bad”.

Back at home I put it in the fridge for a bit to try and get it back to an appropriate temperature (as I doubt 85 degrees is preferable). It smelled of dark fruit, cherries and blackberries, and a hint of mint.

It was pretty light-bodied (and thus why we were able to drink it in 90 degree weather without suffocating) and very acidic. It was spicy, lots of black pepper, but pretty one-dimensional. The finish was ‘earthy’, in not that great a way, or maybe it was just ‘cheap’. It was much better in its overly warm state alongside our dinner than alone after dinner. Myles did the honors of finishing off most of this one.

The Score: ★ ★

I had much higher hopes for this white wine after the debacle with the previous Friuli white wine. When I pulled out a real cork, I knew we were onto something. The wine was a bright golden yellow in the glass and smelled good, but would it taste good?

The name Tocai Friulano sounds tropical to me, for some reason I think tropicana and then the Chiquita banana lady. Maybe that’s why I smelled bananas as the first, and most powerful, scent on the nose. It had an overall tropical vibe, with just a hint of peach.

It tasted like bananas too. I’m starting to wonder if all white wine is going to taste like bananas! This one tasted like alcoholic bananas, almost like a banana flavored liquor. There was also a bit of honey and vanilla, as well as a woody flavor that may have actually been almonds, which is supposed to be one of the more pronounced notes of this grape. It was pretty acidic, which balanced the sweet flavors.

I noticed that the label on the bottle actually only says Friulano. According to the Oxford Companion, the grape Tocai Friulano is actually Sauvignonasse. Tocai Friulano is the Friulan name for it. Apparently, a renaming was necessary, no explanation is offered as to why. Under consideration were Sauvignonasse, Friulano and Vert. Looks like Friulano won out. This grape consists of 30% of white wine grape acreage in the region and is meant to be drunk young. Mission accomplished there, we even used the last glass-worth in the sauce for our chicken a few nights ago, which means even Connor got to enjoy it!

The Score: ★ ★ ★

I finally got around to trying a red wine! I decided to try this wine for a couple reasons. First, I thought I should drink and blog about a red wine since I’d done all white wines, but mostly because refosco is an indigenous varietal to northern Italy (so it has history there). And being a unique varietal, I get another notch on my belt for the Century Club.

Refosco is apparently a group of distinct red varieties. This wine is specifically Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso (translates to ‘the red stalk’), which has a long history in the Friuli region. According to the Oxford Companion, it was used to produce the favorite wine of Livia, Augustus Ceasar’s second wife. Well there you go.

This wine, from Ermacora, was dark purple with bright pink hues around the edges (rather than brick colored, as this wine was young). It had a fruity and fragrant nose, smelling of cherries and blackberries with a bit of black pepper.

It was a pretty easy drinking red, the tannins were very mild, though at first I thought it was a bit hot down the throat. That sensation went away fairly quickly. It also tasted of berries and black pepper, and I thought a bit of tobacco. The finish was very earthy. I’d describe it almost of tasting like dirt, but not in a bad way. K&L’s description described it a bit more appealingly as “gravel”. They said coffee, not tobacco, but otherwise it seems I was right on. Being that I don’t smoke or drink coffee I’m not particularly familiar with their tastes!

I really enjoyed this wine, and if I didn’t have a seemingly endless list of new wines to try and wine in my collection to drink, I’d certainly go out and get more. Since is was a medium-bodied red with low tannins, its a good summer red and would probably go great with dinner on the grill.

The Score: ★ ★ ★½

So two very unfortunate things happened this week. On Tuesday it was 107 degrees outside. This is an unreasonable temperature, especially when you live in a home without air conditioning AND the weather this summer had blessed us with the 5 weeks immediately proceeding this heat burst where the temperature rarely exceed 78. On Monday, when the temperature merely brushed up against 100 degrees, we decided we should open the Blason Pinot Grigio to help cool off.

Which brings us to the second unfortunate thing, though it happened first. The first sign that things might not be great was the bright yellow synthetic cork I pulled out of the bottle. I hate to admit it, but yes, I am biased against wines corked with synthetic materials, especially brightly colored synthetic materials. I just haven’t ever had a wine sealed that way that blew my socks off. (Please don’t confuse this with screw caps, however. I’ve had many a delicious wine sealed with a crew cap).

The wine was super pale yellow and actually smelled pretty good. It was fresh and light with a faint lemon scent. But, then I tasted it. Its not like it was God-awful, it tasted of minerals and hay or straw with a light taste. But, the finish was funky, and just tasted cheap. I did drink my initial 1/2 glass while making dinner, but when I poured the second half after the kids were in bed and took my first few sips I realized I wasn’t enjoying the wine at all. I turned to Myles and announced that I didn’t want anymore. Not from that glass or the bottle. Wine has calories and these just aren’t worth it. And while he finished the remainder in my glass, he didn’t want anymore from the bottle either. Before going to bed I unceremoniously poured the rest of the bottle down the drain.

I can’t help wonder, did K&L steer me wrong by stocking this wine? I don’t know enough to know whether or not the wine was “correct” according to typicity and place standards, so maybe it was fine, just not my thing. Who knows?! K&L describes it as being “sensational” and “extraordinarily drinkable for the price”, being really good in the price-to-quality ratio, and that its a lot better than most other pinot grigios that cost less than $10. All I do know is that we didn’t like it.

I should’ve spent a bit more $$ and gotten this one from a producer often mentioned in my wine books, or this one that received a good score. Perhaps they’re better examples of the grape in this region.

The Score: ★

It was really hard to choose my next region to taste. I’ve just begun so almost everything is left, and I can’t wait to try just about everything! Since it's summer (albeit a mild one. A glorious, glorious mild one), I decided I should stick with somewhere known for its white wines. One of the most sipped white wines in warm weather may be Pinot Grigio, so I decided on Italy. Friuli-Venezia Giulia [free-oo-lee ve-ne-tsyah joo-lyah] to be exact.



Though this region didn’t occupy much space on my to-do list, I found a good selection of enticing offerings at K&L and decided to expand my two wines to try (Pinot Grigio and Tocai Friulano) to five. As Myles put it, I’m a sucker for marketing. In my defense, the other wines are all made from indigenous grapes or are otherwise rare. The diversity of new experiences available from Friuli was too attractive. Besides, its not like K&L knows I’m going region by region and targeted me. Right?

Friuli is the very northeastern “ear” of Italy and part of the Tre Venezie (the others are Tentino-Alto Adige and the Veneto) because of the historical relationship the three regions share to the Republic of Venice. With a bit of nostalgia, I can remember the very first vineyards I ever saw in person (likely the Veneto) back in 1997 when I was (NERD ALERT) touring Europe with a band and choir. We did a day trip from Austria to Venice and I remember being just entranced by the rolling vineyards to be seen along much of the drive. I also recall a very grumpy Italian woman yelling at us at a rest stop in violent Italian. Undoubtedly we group of American teenagers did something wrong- I still don’t know what!

Friuli is best known for its white wines, although almost 50% of their wines are red. It's also prosciutto country where both prosciutto di San Daniele and prosciutto di Parma are made. White wines are what makes this region famous, and especially endearing to me since when the rest of the world began to focus on oaking their wines, apparently here in Italy they were focused on acidic, unoaked whites. I’m particularly looking forward to trying the Toaci (toe-ki, rhymes with hi) Friulano, after reading how hard it is to describe!

So, here’s what I picked up for the month:

2008 Blason Pinot Grigio $8.99
2008 Ermacora Friulano $14.99
2008 Blason Franconia $6.99
2008 Ermacora Refosco $19.99
2007 Ermacora Picolit $49.99

Being such a small region, you’ll notice that the five wines hail from just two wineries. And, with the exception of the Picolit, are very inexpensive. Yay for Italian wine bargains!


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